Knowledge Base

Why is there latency when I try to record through UAD plug-ins in my DAW?

UAD Powered Plug-Ins differ from native plug-ins in that they are processed exclusively by the DSP inside of our UAD-2 DSP Accelerator and Apollo devices, rather than being processed by the host CPU as native plug-ins are. Using this method of external processing leaves the host CPU free to handle the processing of DAW functions and other native tasks, but it also adds latency due to the round trip that the digital audio data must make through the UAD-2 device.

In DAWs that provide full delay compensation, this latency is not an issue while mixing, since the DAW is able to keep everything in time. However the DAW cannot compensate for the latency created by recording or monitoring through UAD plug-ins in real time.

You can lower the DAW’s I/O buffer size to try and reduce this latency, but in many cases lowering it far enough to make the latency usable will cause undesirable audio artifacts due to the increased strain on the host CPU.* Because of this, UAD plug-ins are only intended to be used in the DAW while mixing.

Realtime UAD Processing can be achieved by using any of our Apollo interfaces and the included Console application. Instead of putting UAD plug-ins in the DAW while recording, where they will cause latency, UAD plug ins can be loaded directly into Console where they can be monitored and/or recorded through with no noticeable latency at any I/O buffer size.